


When I Think Of You

by Squikkums



Category: Rick and Morty
Genre: And by loosely I mean I ignored the ‘About’ on, Incest, M/M, Slow Build, Telepathic Morty, Telepathy, Underage - Freeform, loosely, unwanted mental intrusion, ‘Pocket Mortys’ Inspired
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-01-16
Updated: 2016-09-22
Packaged: 2018-05-14 06:32:10
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 7
Words: 12,282
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5733052
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Squikkums/pseuds/Squikkums
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Harsh, calculating and completely beyond his comprehension, that was Rick in a nutshell, or so Morty thought. A twist of fate will give Morty insight into just how much of himself Rick hides away, and the true depth of his feelings, but he will need to survive his new ability first if he wants to actually do anything about it.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks to [Butter](http://isbutteryficslove.tumblr.com/) and [Clair](http://the-clairvoyant-rick.tumblr.com/) for being such wonderful friends and helping me so much with this fic.

“No one can tell, when two people walk closely together, what unconscious communication one mind may have with another.”  
\- Robert Barr

~~~~~

Morty would think, when he finally got a chance to consider it, that it took him a rather embarrassing amount of time to realise that something was wrong after he and Rick had stolen the.. whatever it was Rick had wanted and peeled out of the space station on their latest adventure. He'd put more thought into how the sticky purple liquid he’d managed to spill all over himself was gluing his fingers and eyelashes together and getting up his nose than the potential for some kind of weird telepathic side effect, and no wonder, because he’d had no idea that was even a possibility. Morty barely had time to think about the gunk at all, in fact. All of his focus was on Rick, who was practically holding his own guts in with one hand while he landed the ship with the other.

Morty had been jittering nervously in the passenger seat for the entire trip, despite Rick’s reassurance that he was fine. There was something about Rick’s words that had just.. felt like a lie to him. So he’d been desperately counting the minutes until they made it back home and Rick could stitch himself up. He leapt out of the ship the moment it landed to grab Rick's extensive first aid kit and throw down a clean sheet of plastic on the workbench in the garage. Rick never bothered much with proper sterilisation, and Morty had taken it on himself to fight the battle against Rick getting some weird alien disease due to absentminded messiness.

~~~

Rick hadn't even noticed the purple gunk coating his grandson, and he wouldn’t realise for a long time that traces of it had seeped into his open wounds when he lay back on the tarp Morty had spread on the table for him. To be fair, stitching up your own stomach while high on some really excellent painkillers was very distracting and required a lot of concentration, not to mention the giddy relief flooding through him at not having simply passed out from bloodloss and died while flying the two of them home.

It was more than an hour before Rick had finally stopped the bleeding and stitched himself up fully, and by then he was woozy and bleary eyed from the effort of focusing through the hazy forced relaxation of the drugs he'd injected himself with. He sighed painfully once he’d cleaned and bandaged the last, tricky slash on his lower back, and looked up at Morty, who was standing just out of the way, shirtless and damp with pink, clean skin and wet, messy hair, twisting the fuck out of a wet washcloth and looking anxious and concerned.

 _Oh shit, look at him. He's so fucking cute.. and worried about me. I don't deserve that kind of devotion, but oh.. I love it. Love him.. Oh Morty._ Rick thought to himself, but just said, "Why are you wet? And just standing there.. look, nevermind, just help me up. I've got about a grand worth of drugs in me to waste with a good night's sleep."

~~~

Morty had been watching with horrified fascination as Rick, shirtless and covered in blood, had neatly and skilfully stitched his own stomach shut. He was weak with relief, finally knowing for sure that Rick was going to be okay. It wasn't until Rick had tied off the last one that Morty even remembered how gross and uncomfortable he felt, doubly so now that he had a hard-on for his blood soaked, injured grandfather.

Morty had yanked off his gooey shirt and wet down a cloth to clean himself up with, unwilling to leave Rick's side until his grandfather was completely patched up. Rick would probably need his help to get to his room anyway once he'd finished bandaging the smaller scrapes and slashes on his chest and back. Morty wanted to offer to take care of those for Rick, but his hands were shaky and his mouth was dry just from watching the man, and he didn't want Rick to guess why. So he just focused on tidying himself up as best he could and waited for Rick to acknowledge him again.

But when Rick finally did look up at him and speak Morty missed the words entirely, overwhelmed as they were by the rich vibrancy of what _had_ to be Rick's thoughts. Morty had never felt.. Seen? Heard? There wasn't a word for it.. But he'd never felt anything so beautiful in his life. Rick's mind was a whirling, sparking maelstrom of sharp edged brilliance and deep, still pools of powerful emotion. And his thoughts about Morty were threaded through with so much love that the revelation in the actual words of Rick's thoughts was almost anticlimactic. Of course Rick loved him. Morty instantly knew it as deeply and truly as he knew himself, and he'd never in his life felt as safe and special and cherished as he did in that moment of revelation, surrounded as he was by Rick's beautiful mind. The deep, all encompassing connection Morty felt to Rick started to slip away into more of a surface awareness as quickly as it had come, and Morty ached to feel that love and safety again, despite knowing he couldn't very well just drown in Rick's mind forever; he practically dove forward to wrap Rick up in a tight hug.

~~~

Rick jerked in Morty's hold, startled but feeling no pain from the headlong impact, and then wrapped his arms around Morty, holding him close.

"Jesus, Morty, I'm fine. It was never life threatening as long as we made it back here in time." Rick pet Morty's hair awkwardly with one hand while holding him close, watching as his blood drenched fingers left streaks of dark red through Morty's hair. He imagined grabbing a handful of Morty's curls and arching him backwards on the table behind him. Smearing his hand down Morty's chin and throat and chest and then lapping up the trail of blood, replacing it with skin that was red and bruised from him sucking and biting his way down Morty's body. But he was used to thoughts like that, and pushed them aside with skill born of far too much practice. He'd keep Morty safe from everything, including.. no, especially himself.

~~~

"S-s-s-sorry Rick, I was just so worried, y'know?" Morty half-lied, clinging to Rick. Physical contact seemed to give a hint of that richness and depth he'd felt before. While Rick held him he could feel the brush of his grandfather's mind against his own, even if Rick wasn't thinking anything strongly enough to pick up.

This was so strange.. And Morty knew he should tell Rick about it right away, but he cringed at the thought of Rick trying to block him out of his thoughts the way he had with Fart. He'd opened his mouth to blurt it out anyway, determined to do the right thing, when he was hit with a powerful mental.. clip almost, of Rick's fantasy about pushing him back on the table behind them and just.. just ravaging him. Morty was equal parts turned on and shocked at just how filthy Rick's mind was, and so completely swept up in the fantasy with him that when Rick briskly and efficiently shunted the thoughts to the side he felt a tug, like the straining of a muscle, as they were torn away. Morty gasped quietly when Rick's mind filled, instead, with a painful self-loathing as he promised to protect Morty from.. from himself.. with a heavy sense of duty and infinite care.

Morty wanted desperately to reassure Rick. To tell him that he.. But what would he say? That he'd had a stupid teenage crush on Rick for more than a year now? That he loved him too? Morty didn't even know that love like the kind Rick felt for him existed. It was so.. so much, too much to wrap his head around while trying simultaneously to come to terms with his terrifying new ability. So Morty just squeezed Rick tighter for a moment and then wiped away most of the blood on Rick’s skin carefully with the cloth in his hand, unthinkingly smearing more of the remnants of the purple goo into Rick's skin and his still-open wounds. Then Morty helped him to his room, basking in the safe-warm-loved feeling still radiating off of his grandfather from when Morty had cleaned him up.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hey, on an entirely unrelated note, do you remember that episode of Buffy with the telepathy? It didn't go too well for her, did it..? -cough- Are you excited? o_~


	2. Chapter 2

Rick woke up from a wonderful dream, but it slipped away in the wake of the hot, painful clench of his recently stitched stomach. He cursed himself viciously for having fallen asleep without setting any kind of alarm to wake him up in time for a new dose of painkillers. The bottle of pills wasn’t even in the room with him, of course; he’d left it laying on his fucking workbench last night. _Shit, well, nothing for it. I'll be damned if I'm gonna call for help._ He went to lever himself painfully to his feet when Morty slipped into his room, holding the bottle with a strained smile on his face.

“H-hey Rick, I-I-I bet those- those drugs you took uh, I bet they wore off by now, huh?” Morty stuttered his way through his words, looking as nervous as he sounded as he held out the bottle to Rick.

Rick gave Morty a curious once over. The kid looked exhausted and stressed. His eyes were red-rimmed and nervous, his hair was an absolute mess, and he kept twitching at nothing. He hated to see Morty upset, and ran through a few of the adventures that he always saved up for when his grandson was feeling low. Beautiful places, worlds that would get his imagination running again, situations that would pull at the too-soft heart in him that Rick so loved and envied, and fill him back up with that self-righteous fire he always got when he could tell Rick that something ‘just wasn't right and they had to do something about it’. But this seemed to call for something calm and stunning; Morty looked like he needed to just chill the fuck out. Too bad the little shit was such a fucking teetotaler, what he really looked like he needed was to just get baked out of his mind and float around in space for a few hours, one of Rick's personal favourite methods of relaxation. At least, one of his favourites that he could share with his grandson, since fucking him boneless was off the table.

“Jesus, you look worse than me right now, and I've got 30 stitches across my gut as my excuse. What's yours?” He grabbed the pill bottle, a wave of grateful love filling him up at Morty's thoughtfulness, and popped three of the little pills into his mouth, swallowing them dry.

\---

Morty's head hurt. There was a dull, pulsing ache thrumming through his skull, and there had been almost constantly since the first time he'd woken up last night, suddenly, from a dream that wasn't his own. That first dream had been about winning some kind of award about apples, and he'd come awake feeling like he was being encroached upon on all sides, squeezed into a too-small space in his own mind. He'd managed to drift off to sleep a couple more times that night, but each time he'd be jerked awake by another dream that wasn't his own. Morty had been laying on his back and staring at the ceiling as it slowly lightened with the rising of the sun, not quite asleep, when he'd had his first moment of relief all night. _Rick was dreaming._ Morty could feel it on the edges of his consciousness like a soothing balm to his overworked mind, and he let himself slip into it with a groan of relief.

In the dream, Rick was floating through the vastness of space, smiling peacefully and surrounded by the warm, yellow light of the sun beating down on his face and chest. Morty basked in the warmth with him, enjoying the still silence and expansive emptiness surrounding them, until he felt Rick's mind stir. He looked over to Rick at the same time as Rick turned to him, looking confusedly through the area where Morty was. “M-morty..? What are you.. doing here?” Rick said, each word becoming less hazy as he slowly focused on his grandson. But before Morty could think to respond Rick's eyes went wide and his hands clutched around his stomach, and then the dream shattered around them.

Morty jerked awake, just like he had all the other times, but this time he woke to the feeling of Rick in pain, and the knowledge that this was what had dragged Rick out of his dream, rather than Morty's presence. _Would he remember? Was any of that even real?_ Morty pushed his questions aside, and was up and moving as Rick started the day with a rather cruel tirade at himself for forgetting the pain pills; he had the bottle in hand long before Rick had decided to be a stubborn son of a bitch and drag himself to the garage on his own to fetch it. Morty pushed the door open nervously; he was paranoid, as only a person who knew they were doing something wrong could be, that Rick would know something was up when Morty arrived with exactly what he needed right after he'd thought about going to get it, and mumbled an excuse as he held out the bottle, taking in the sight of Rick looking so sleepy and disheveled. He looked softer like this, shirtless and skinny, with wiry muscles and hair that was even more of a wild, messy riot around his head than usual.

Morty wanted to curl up in his lap and soak up the heat from his sleep-warm body. He wanted to wrap himself up in the soothing relief of Rick's mind, and that was even before he caught the thread of Rick's thoughts as he looked Morty over. Morty felt a little swell of affection for his grandfather as he heard how much care and concern for him Rick kept hidden away behind an uncaring façade. This was followed by a thrill of pleasure as Rick's thoughts danced over another imagined tryst. Morty had never really felt desirable before, but Rick seemed so _hungry_ for him. There was an undercurrent of red hot lust, restrained by his grandfather's indomitable self-control, always there when he thought of Morty. It was heady, and such a relief to know that he wasn't alone in his feelings for Rick, that he wasn't the only one holding back; he felt a little curl of guilt in his stomach again for not telling Rick everything, but with every private thought he heard the choice to just bite the bullet and tell Rick became that much harder. He'd unearthed a secret so huge and private and life changing that Rick was sure to feel exposed, maybe even betrayed by Morty. And while Morty wouldn't give up the knowledge of that secret for anything, he didn't want Rick to feel like that.

He also knew that as soon as he told Rick, he would begin working on fixing this, and Morty guiltily admitted to himself that he didn't want to lose the connection he felt to Rick when he touched his thoughts. He knew it was stupid, knew that whatever was going on with him could be the symptom of something much worse, but it was so easy to just put it off. What was one more day? Morty would tell Rick about it tonight, or maybe tomorrow morning so he could dream with Rick just once more.. but tomorrow morning at the latest. He just needed a little more time to really cement the feel of Rick's mind in his own so he could remember it when it was gone.

“Morty?” Rick's voice interrupted his thoughts and he realised with a start that he hadn't answered Rick's question. It was hard to focus on Rick's words though, when his thoughts held so much more emotion. But Morty could hear the concern in Rick’s voice this time, not just ‘hear’ it threaded through his thoughts.

“I just didn’t- didn’t sleep too well, that’s all. You uh, yesterday was pretty rough, Rick. I was worried about you. I really- I mean, it made me pretty anxious, you know?” Morty tried to explain away his distraction, but he wasn’t sure if he did a very good job. Then he heard Rick’s thoughts and knew he hadn’t, but Rick wasn’t going to call him on it.

~~~

There was something wrong with Morty. Rick had suspected it last night, and the state of the kid this morning backed it up, but what really cinched it was Morty trying to make him feel guilty for scaring him yesterday. Morty always fell back on trying to guilt Rick into doing what he wanted when he was trying to hide his real reason for wanting it, and right now Morty wanted him to drop it, Rick thought, fondly remembering Morty's stumbling attempt at lying his way into getting that sex robot from the pawn shop. Normally, this would make Rick want to ferret out the real reason all the more, but he was so fucking sore and tired right now. If Morty said he was fine then it would probably keep until after school, and Rick could sleep away the day in preparation for a nice, relaxing adventure with his grandson, maybe to watch a star go supernova or something.

“Are y-you sure that's it, Morty? You're a real twitchy motherfucker right now.” Rick asked in a hard voice, eyeing Morty suspiciously despite his expectation of a brushoff. If it were really serious Morty would probably cave at that.

~~~

“Y-yeah, I'm fine Rick. L-look, everyone else is awake- probably awake by now. You wanna go get breakfast?” Morty's response worked, just as he knew it would. Rick nodded and pushed himself to his feet, then pulled a comb through his messy hair and rummaged around in his dresser for a change of clothes. Morty stepped out of the room after that to give him the privacy to change, feeling terribly guilty for manipulating him. Rick would normally have been right about his suspicious glare and expectant tone driving Morty to confess what was wrong, but it didn't have the same power over him with Rick's real feelings softening the harsh words, and Morty knew exactly what to say to make him drop it. His guilt was compounded by how easily Rick had realised something was wrong with him, despite having a serious injury distracting him and Morty's best efforts to keep it from him. Morty, on the other hand, hadn’t had any idea just how different Rick's thoughts were from his words.

A conversation he'd had last year at that house party with Birdperson flashed through his mind, and he felt ashamed to remember what he'd said. ‘ _Come on, Birdperson! Rick's not that complicated! He's just a huge asshole!’_ But Rick _was_ that complicated, he kept so much of himself secret, much more than Morty had ever thought. Rick was still a huge asshole, of course, but he also loved him, he'd do anything for him, and the idea that he might never have known that was absolutely abhorrent to Morty.

He pushed those thoughts aside as Rick came out of his room. Morty smiled up at him, then fell into step beside him, deliberately letting his arm brush Rick's with rare confidence as they headed towards the dining room, feeling how Rick enjoyed the casual contact as much as he did. But Morty's little bubble of happiness popped as he came into sight of the rest of his family, and was swamped with the cacophony of their thoughts.


	3. Chapter 3

Rick stared down at his grandson, concerned, when Morty froze up in the doorway of the dining room, looking poleaxed. He rested his hand on Morty's shoulder; he wasn't sure what was going on with the kid, but he relaxed at the contact and gave Rick a grateful smile, so Rick left his hand there as he propelled Morty into the room and to their seats at the table. 

Beth and Jerry were in rare form today – Jerry had recently been invited to a monthly golf game by a former coworker at the shitty advertising job he'd been fired from, and was taking every opportunity to lord it over Beth and her current lack of a social life outside of work. His daughter was holding her own, though, with some truly vicious and subtle digs of her own. She was managing to mock Jerry's unemployed, pathetic ass while also making him feel stupid for not understanding all the ways he'd been insulted. It was amusing as hell, but made for a tense, loud breakfast, and Rick wished they'd shut the fuck up if only to make the tension around Morty's eyes and mouth go away. The kid had barely touched his bacon and eggs; he'd just been staring vacantly down at his plate. 

\---

Morty was shocked into stillness at the twin waves of vitriol pouring out from his parents. He couldn’t feel the love between them at all, and it shook him to his core. But when Rick rested his hand on his shoulder, he felt Rick's concern for him flood through his mind like a wall of water, insulating him from the cruel thoughts pounding all around him. He let Rick lead him to the table, numbly taking his seat and trying to hold on to how his mind felt right now with Rick unknowingly guarding his thoughts. Then Rick let go and it didn't matter how tightly Morty clung. It was like trying to hold the water he'd imagined Rick's thoughts as, and the buffer between him and the world melted away.

Morty tried everything, throughout breakfast, to block out the intrusive and loud thoughts of his parents, the quiet, irritating hum of Summer as she questioned everything she said before texting it and even the depressing cloud of Rick's distancing techniques and forced lack of interest towards his daughter's unhappiness. He tried clearing his mind, he tried imagining a brick wall, he tried anything he could remember seeing in movies, everything he could think of, before finally latching onto how Rick had tried to keep Fart out of his head with a constant stream of thoughts.  _ Row row row your boat _ was the unfortunate tune to pop into his head, but the relief that came with a few repetitions of the earworm of a song was worth it. He could still hear his family humming angrily away in the back of his head, but now the only thing actually intruding on his thoughts was endless  _ merrily merrily merrily merrily's _ , which was better by far than having to experience first hand how screwed up his parent's marriage was. Rick was the hardest to block out; his thoughts were still coiled through and rubbing against Morty's own, but Morty didn't really want  _ him _ out anyway, so he called it a win. He could feel that Rick was thinking about him again, that he was worried about him. Morty popped a piece of bacon into his mouth, more for the curl of relief it gave Rick than because he was hungry, and chewed to the beat of his song.

\---

By the end of breakfast Rick wanted nothing more than to just go back to bed and sleep away the next few hours. The numbing agent he'd used yesterday had probably saved his life, but until it was fully out of his system he couldn't do anything to heal up his stomach, and the only drugs he  _ could _ use were just not up to snuff. 

Morty was eating now, he seemed to have managed to push aside the snippy little fight his parents were still having. So Rick didn't think twice about pushing gingerly away from the table and heading off to his room again, pausing to give his daughter's shoulder a squeeze and smile the same bracing smile she'd always given him when he and her mother had fought. Beth was far too much like him: prickly, easily hurt, stubborn and proud.  _ And too good for Jerry, the insensitive, insecure asshole.  _ But she loved like him too; he worried that she would tear herself and her marriage to shreds holding on until there was nothing left to cling to. He brushed his hand along Beth's hair and then left the room, holding his arm against his stomach once he'd turned the corner. He just needed to sleep and heal up, then he could do something nice with Morty, get the kid to chill the fuck out and stop worrying him so much.

\---

Morty listened avidly to Rick's thoughts about his mom and the grandmother he could barely remember. It was strange to be jealous of the low pulse of love for _his_ _grandmother_ that Rick still felt. Rick’s love for her was like an old, infected wound - long ignored and painful to the touch. He felt Rick shy away from thinking of her, and felt a guilty little thrill that Rick thought of him to distract himself from the old memories. He was ashamed that most of his guilt at the thought was because he _didn't_ feel guilty, despite the judder of shock that went down his spine as the reality of their relationship smacked him in the face. It didn't change how he felt, the way his feelings for Rick had been deepening since he'd first touched his mind. 

Morty stood as soon as Rick had moved out of the dining room and followed after him like they were tied together. He wanted to ask Rick to reassure him of the love he couldn't feel between his parents right now, and be around him for just a few moments longer before he had to go to school.

“Rick?” Morty called after him, softly, as Rick went to open his door. His grandfather turned towards him, eyebrow raised questioningly. Morty purposely tried to stay out of Rick's head as much as he could for this. He didn't want to know what Rick was thinking when he just wanted reassurance.  _ Row row row your boat..  _

“D-do.. mom and dad- I mean, they still love each other, even if they- if they fight, don't they?” Morty looked up at Rick pleadingly.

Rick crossed his arms and leaned his shoulder against his closed door, a frown on his face, and took a minute before answering him. “Loving someone i-isn't always enough, Morty, for everything to just work out. But your parents are trying, and no one tries that hard to fix something if they don't love.. it, them - w-whatever they want to hold onto.”

“B-b-but it didn't feel like they- they weren't trying very hard at breakfast.”

“It's hard to love someone all the time, th-that doesn't mean you don't still love them.” Rick said that casually, seemingly bored, but his mind swirled up with memories that caught at Morty, despite his best efforts, and drew him in.

Morty was screaming at Rick, wearing a tattered suit on a rooftop above the carnage of their world, and Rick hated absolutely everything about this situation. He’d fucked up, he’d fucked up so much, and destroyed their world in the process. Why had he ever agreed to this? But that was a stupid question. Morty was the reason, Morty and his stupid fucking crush on that little twit at his school. Morty had begged, in his own bitchy teenage way, and Rick had just fucking caved and made him a mind control roofie drug because he was a weak, pathetic man who couldn't deny Morty anything, no matter how bad an idea it was and no matter how much it tore him up inside to do it. He was a sick fuck who had overcompensated for his own jealousy of some little.. child that Morty wanted in a way he'd never want Rick by going against what little morals he had left, and look where it got him. Fucked up his universe all to hell. And he'd been doing so well, and thinking he was so much better than those other Ricks to still be in his original world. Well so much for that. Now he'd need to drag Morty to a new universe, and the poor sonufabitch wouldn't be able to deal with that as easily as he would.

Before Morty could really process that memory of Rick's at all, another one overtook him, and then another, moving faster now. Rick was holding a knife to Morty's throat drunkenly, needing to know that he was really there, that he was real this time, that he'd actually made it back to him. His head was full of a constant, drunken stream of pleading thoughts,  _ Oh god, oh fuck, please let him be real... please let this be real. Morty..  _ on repeat as he clutched at the kid's hair in desperation.

Then Morty had a gun pressed to Rick's head as Rick lied through his teeth about his memories of Morty and goaded him to just fucking shoot him, so that if he did it.. if he pulled the trigger, (and the longing threaded through that thought terrified Morty) maybe Rick's words would lessen the blow. If Morty was real, and he didn’t even know if he wanted that to be true this time, he didn't want him to hurt more than he had to for what he was about to do.

Morty pulled out of Rick’s memories and stared, shocked, at his emotionless eyes. There wasn't even a hint of his thoughts there. Morty blinked stupidly, slack jawed, and tried to process his own reaction to those memories. But Rick interrupted him, waving a hand in front of his face. 

“You're acting really weird, kid. Do you want to stay home?”

“N-n-nn-no! I've missed too much school this month already, I'm fine. Thanks, for the- for talking- for the talk.” Morty responded, giving Rick a shaky grin and retreating down the hall to get his backpack, mind whirling.


	4. Chapter 4

Morty couldn’t stop thinking about Rick's memories as he walked to school, trailing well behind Summer as usual. They were some of Morty’s worst memories too, and it shed new light on them to know what was going on in Rick's head when they happened. He'd known Rick regretted having to drag them to a new reality, though it hadn’t seemed to phase him in the slightest once they were there. But he'd had no idea how conflicted the man had been, let alone how long Rick had been battling with his feelings for him or how much influence he really had over his grandfather. The scientist had been surprisingly accommodating of Morty for weeks after they'd made the switch. He had spent hours alone with Morty when he felt too uncomfortable and out of place in this new version of his life to be around his sort-of-still-his family. Morty wondered, now, whether Rick had been getting something from that time with him too, and just hiding it behind the best poker face Morty had ever seen.

Morty’s thoughts were interrupted by a strange pressure against his mind. It felt like he was walking head first into a blizzard, and he squinted his eyes at the sensation as his school came into view. _Oh.. oh crap._

Morty stopped walking and just stared at the innocuous building that was absolutely buzzing with hundreds of minds. Luckily, the sheer number of them blended together. He couldn’t pick out individual thoughts unless he concentrated, and after hearing a few different streams of teenage, self-centered misery he pulled back, humming determinedly under his breath. He could do this, it was just like walking through a loud hall filled with conversations.. sort of. _Row row row your boat.._

Morty went through the door of his high school gingerly and walked through the halls towards his locker, painfully aware that he wasn't being subtle about his nerves because of the battery of thoughts about ‘that weird Smith kid that was always getting pulled out of school’ that pushed their way into his mind. He was dismayed to realise that he couldn’t seem to block out thoughts that were about him as easily as he could everything else, and put more effort into his well-practiced ability to fade into the background. He made it to his locker like that, head down, shoulders hunched, and grabbed what he needed for math class. Halfway there. Morty took a deep, steadying breath and continued through the halls. While he walked he tried to distract himself with Rick’s memories again.

He’d pushed the night Rick had drunkenly assaulted him to the back of his mind, the man's raving about simulations not standing out amongst the rest of his inebriated ramblings. But Rick had felt so _scared_ in his memory of what Morty had chalked up to Rick being a violent, drunken mess. He wondered what had happened, more insistently curious than before, to provoke such an extreme reaction from his grandfather. He was used to Rick just being... well, his frequently hammered, often violent, crazy, brilliant grandfather. Trying to understand _why_ he did what he did was so foreign to him. But so was reading people’s thoughts, and he was doing alright with that so far. Something must have driven Rick to that state, and Morty had the ability, now, to find out what it was. With a bit of effort he could probably get Rick to think about that memory again, maybe even force it forward so he could see it. Maybe he could try that when he got home today. Morty squared his shoulders and sped up, purposely shying away from the memory of Rick begging Morty to shoot him. He was dealing with enough right now, he'd finally made it to class.. and when he tried to think about Rick feeling so defeated and broken Morty felt like he might be sick.

Morty pushed open the door and his eyes searched, as they always did, for Jessica. And there she was, the unattainable archetype of the girl of his dreams. Morty loved Rick despite, and sometimes because of, his multitude of glaring flaws. Rick had been entirely right when he’d said that it was hard work loving someone all the time, especially with all the situations they got themselves into. But Jessica.. she was perfect; it was as easy as breathing to love her. And this was an opportunity he couldn't pass up. Rick's feelings for him felt so good against his mind. He'd never felt anything so wonderful in his life as that. And he couldn't stop imagining what it would feel like to know what Jessica thought of him. Morty walked up to her desk and smiled shakily.

“H-hey Jessica.” He said, not even noticing his stutter despite usually being painfully aware of it in front of her.

“Oh, hey Morty.” Jessica responded, and her thoughts flowed up over the words, drowning them out. Her mind was sticky and clinging, but also slick, like oil and warm taffy. It was overwhelming, and Morty struggled against the sensation before her thoughts sucked him down. _Gotta keep my answer subtle, Morty has that crush on me. I’d hate for him to stop looking at me like that.. and guys aren't interested in girls that are interested back. Not that I'd date him, he's sweet and all and his crush is cute, but he's not really on my level. Not like Brad is either, ugh, but with a bit of work at least Brad could get a basketball scholarship or something. And it's nice to always feel smart around him. Plus he’s the coolest guy in this school. Morty's one of the weirdest kids here. Even that kickass party his sister and grandfather threw had the freakiest people. Summer is cool though, a lot cooler than she was last year, and older than me. She doesn't constantly hang out with her grandfather either, yuck, how weird is that? Oh. My. God. Is he still staring at me? Creepy._

Morty tore himself free and just stood there in bewildered, stunned misery. _What?_ Jessica's thoughts were so.. shallow. She didn't feel much of anything for him, a wash of pity and flattery and calculating evaluation amongst feelings of mild fondness. But she didn't seem to really feel much of anything for anyone but herself. Not in a mean way, and her thoughts about Morty weren't mean either. They were just.. bland. She cared about herself. About how others saw her, what they could do for her, what they thought of her. She was just like every other mind he'd brushed up against in this school. Morty had been expecting so much more, had put Jessica on such a pedestal, that her banality devastated him.

He jerked into motion as she noticed him just standing there like a loser, and stumbled backwards, bumping into the desk next to her and sending the textbook and pencil case and loose-leaf on top of it tumbling to the ground with a clatter- drawing the attention of everyone in the room.

The pressure of all those people suddenly thinking about him pushed against Morty's mind, completely overwhelming while he was already caught off guard by the letdown of Jessica's thoughts; Morty lurched further away, catching himself on the edge of Mr. Goldenfold’s desk and knocking a pencil holder to the ground too. The whispers around him were nothing compared to the boom of mental voices; he saw Mr. Goldenfold’s mouth move but he couldn't pick out his words over everything else. His senses were overwhelmed by a slew of disdain and judgement.

_Look at him, I bet he's as drunk as that old guy that's always dragging him out of- What a fucking freak- What's wrong with him?-That's so embarrassing, I'm so glad that's not me- Is he high?- What a weirdo.._

Morty couldn't think with all the other thoughts filling his head. The relentless clamour of unyielding negativity left Morty defenseless, incapable of even being able to remember his musical protection, let alone the ability to sing it for a few seconds worth of reprieve. He tried to head for the door, desperate to get away, but tripped on the pencils scattered across the ground and slammed it open with his shoulder instead. He went tumbling through to the hall and into a crowd of students rushing to class, knocking people aside as he fell to his hands and knees. Morty wanted to scrabble away and cower somewhere quiet, desperate to get away from the swarm of people surrounding him and tearing into his mind, but his arms and legs felt like they were made of stone; he was frozen, body as overwhelmed as his mind.

Morty watched, detached, as blood dripped onto the linoleum of the hall from his nose. _Had he hit it on something?_ His head felt stretched, it ached, and he felt a frisson of fear run through him as he realised how much danger he was in. He couldn't control this, it had been stupid to try. He should have told Rick what was wrong this morning when he'd asked, what had he been thinking?!

_Rick_ .. He needed Rick. His grandfather would help him, protect him, make them _go away._ Morty reached out, pushing the pain and the pressure of the school aside with a wrenching shove as he searched for the cool, electric sensation of Rick's mind. But he couldn't reach him. He couldn't.. he didn't know how to do this! Morty felt blackness start to encroach upon him, filling his field of vision, the spreading pool of blood on the ground fading away, and then he felt himself start to fall. Terror flooded through him, he was so afraid he wouldn't wake up, and he _needed_ Rick! Needed to see him again, feel his mind, that all encompassing love, the roiling brilliance that was unlike anything he'd felt before.

**_Rick!_ **

Morty screamed for the man desperately, with every fiber of his being, before everything went dark and he slumped to the floor.


	5. Chapter 5

Rick was lying, fully dressed, on his bed and drifting through a haze of dull muffled pain when he felt Morty call out to him. He was on his feet with his portal gun in hand before the thought that Morty had spoken to him  _ telepathically _ had fully sunken in. But Rick focused, instead, on how he knew exactly where Morty was right now, as surely as he knew how much pain and fear and desperation the kid felt.. as surely as he knew that Morty needed him.  _ Now. _

Everything else could wait. 

Rick dialed in the coordinates to the hall outside of Morty's math class and shot a portal. He stepped out directly in front of Morty's crumpled body, lying in a pool of his own blood, and into the centre of an empty space surrounded by gawkers. Rick snarled and glared around at them. Morty had wanted them gone almost as much as he'd wanted Rick to come for him.

“Leave.” His voice was terrifying, the voice of a killer. Low and dangerous, it demanded obedience, and the crowd of teenagers scattered, no one wanting to be the last one there. But Rick wasn't paying attention to them anymore. He was kneeling next to Morty's body, fingers pressed to his neck, feeling for a pulse.

He sighed in relief once he found it, faint but steady. Whatever Morty had done to himself, he was just unconscious right now. To find out anything further he'd need his equipment, so Rick gathered Morty's limp body into his arms, noting the blood smeared across his pallid cheek and under his nose with forced detachment, and stepped back through another portal. 

Back in the garage, Rick laid Morty carefully on his workbench, taking a moment to run his hand over his grandson's hair gently before starting a battery of tests to figure out what the fuck had gone wrong. A furious tirade of recriminations was pounding through his head as he worked.

_ You knew there was something wrong with him. You knew and you let him leave anyway. If he's brain dead it's your fucking fault. _

The tests were no distraction at all from his guilty self-flagellation. He could do this shit in his sleep, and Morty being able to  _ call for Rick with his mind _ certainly narrowed things down. So the scientist had nothing to do but worry and hate himself for paying more attention to an injury he'd already fucking fixed than he had to the nebulous unknown problem he'd known Morty was hiding from him. The stubborn little shit had no idea what was and wasn't dangerous, but Rick should have been smarter than that. 

The genius paused, considering the results from his scan of Morty's brain. It was reacting like Morty was at a damn Flesh Curtains concert, a veritable flood of noise overwhelming his overtaxed mind. Morty had spoken straight into Rick's head, and he was hearing things Rick couldn't. The next logical step wasn't exactly rocket science, which Rick did for fun anyway, but he tried not to think about it. 

The first thing he had to do was block out extraneous thoughts, and Rick had just the thing. He'd thrown it together in the wake of the Fart debacle, and improved upon the design after that disastrous parasite infestation to create a disruptor that would enclose a bubble of space about the size of the garage, blocking thoughts and foreign minds well outside of the designated area. Rick pulled the mess of electronics and tangled wires out from its place on the shelf and  _ (ugh) _ plugged it in, silently disgusted with himself for leaving the device in such a raw, unfinished state. But the riot of colours lighting up Morty's brain scan faded immediately, so it did the job well enough in spite of that.

In fact, it did the job perfectly; just a few moments after he'd turned it on Morty’s brain scan showed signs of him waking up. Rick grabbed a rag from the table and went to wet it in the sink, planning to wipe away the blood on Morty's face before the kid woke up, but he paused and stared down at the rag he'd grabbed. It was covered in purple goo, and Rick suddenly remembered seeing the stuff smeared all over Morty during their frantic flight home yesterday. He also remembered rubbing away flaky purple remnants from his own skin both last night and this morning, which was rather alarming, given all the shit going on with Morty right now. Rick was pulled from his contemplation when Morty let out a pitiful little whimper. He grabbed a clean cloth from the laundry basket on top of the dryer, wet it quickly, and returned to Morty's side. The suspiciously purple cloth was dropped on the counter nearby. Rick wanted a sample of the crud that had been all over Morty. 

“You don't- don't look fucking fine to me, Morty. You- you lying little shit. You fainted like a bitch before you'd even been at school for an hour.” Rick growled out the words, irritated by the flood of relief he felt when Morty squinted up at him. 

\---

Morty regained consciousness slowly. The first thing he noticed was the silence around him; it was deafening and absolutely wonderful. It felt  _ so good _ to finally be alone in his own mind again. Hot on the heels of that thought he became aware of Rick, because he wasn't actually alone. Rick's mind was a cool, wet balm to his aching thoughts, a gentle bubble surrounding him and holding his overstretched head together. Morty smiled dopily despite the irritation and burgeoning suspicion he could feel from Rick. This was what heaven must feel like, just he and Rick connected and alone, his grandfather's powerful mind all encompassing and open for Morty to inundate himself with, to roll around in and soak up, all that love and strength and brilliance seeping into his very pores and tying them together, one connected mind closer than two bodies could ever be.

Rick's angry words pulled Morty from his fantasy, and he looked over to Rick nervously, pushing himself up onto one elbow so he was turned towards the man towering above him.

“I- I may have um.. downplayed m-m-my situation?” Morty said, more question than explanation.

Rick didn't let that fly. “Oh of course, Morty, of course. The situation you told me wasn't a situation. I-is that the  _ situation _ you're talking about?” Rick's tone was sneering and harsh, but his fingers on Morty's jaw were gentle as he tilted his head up and wiped away the blood marring his grandson's face, and with the physical contact came a flood of concern and love and slowly dissipating terror now that Morty was conscious to argue with, and it softened his words.

Morty squirmed guiltily in his hold nonetheless though, his own conscience picking up the slack. As Rick let go of him and stepped away with a purple stained cloth in hand to one of his myriad machines Morty took a deep breath. It was time to come clean.

“R-rick I- yesterday I think something went wrong with me, b-but I didn't really realise, you know? N-not right away, with you being so hurt and all.. B-b-but I can kind of, um, read people's thoughts now?” Morty squeezed his eyes shut as he spoke, but squinted one eye open just as Rick stilled and then turned partially away from the whatever he'd been doing with that cloth, looking over his shoulder at Morty.

He tried to get something from Rick's expression as he felt the man's mind mantle, not blocking him out but feeling wary and hostile. Rick's face was closed off and blank though, expressionless. But his thoughts.. his thoughts were a lightning bolt, precise and sharp.  _ He knows. _ The two words echoed like a gong in Rick's mind, painfully loud, shaking loose aching self-hatred and fear, loathing and guilt. Morty felt his grandfather start to retreat from him and he scrambled to his knees on the tabletop, reaching one hand out to grab at Rick's lab coat.

“No! Rick it's okay! D-d-d-don't go!” He begged, not realising he'd addressed Rick's thoughts, rather than any words he'd said, until Rick spun fully around, pulling his coat from Morty's clinging grasp and staring at him with wide, shocky eyes. 

They froze like that for one long, long moment, Morty's hand outstretched, Rick gripping, white knuckled, at the table behind him. Then Rick reacted, slamming up a wall of sharp edged white noise and mathematical equations between them, knocking Morty violently out of his mind.


	6. Chapter 6

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hello all you wonderful readers! Please take note, Rick and Morty do not have a very good time in this chapter. There is mention of rape (non-graphic) as a memory, and I've included a spoilery summary in the end notes if you want to read that before you decide how you’d like to proceed.

Morty felt himself get shoved out of Rick's mind like time was moving at a fraction of it's true speed; the wall of humming white noise slamming into place between them in an instant felt like it took forever, Morty clinging desperately to the last brush of Rick's consciousness as it was torn away from him.

Rick had obviously been practicing since their last encounter with telepathy, because Morty couldn't feel even a whisper of Rick anymore. The silence surrounding them that had felt so comforting and safe just moments ago when it was just the two of them now felt achingly lonely and almost hostile with the buzzing blockade of Rick's mental shield taking up more ‘space’ in Morty's awareness than he would have thought possible. 

But despite the huge, static presence Morty felt bereft. He ached like Rick had severed a limb rather than simply closed his mind to him. He tumbled off of the table, landing hard on his knees, but was barely aware that he'd done so. All of his focus was on scrabbling against that wall of jumbled facts and equations and recitations that was keeping Rick from him. Distantly, he heard a high, keening whine, and it took him far too long to recognise that the sound was actually coming from him. But once he did he started to speak, to beg. “Riiick.. Rick p-please- please don't shut me out, I'm sorry! I n-need.. let me in? I’m.. help. Alone..” Morty's words fell away into jumbled, meaningless pleas, culminating in a needy, wordless whine.

But Rick’s face was indifferent, cold and remote; his arms had crossed almost protectively across his chest, and Morty couldn’t feel anything from him beyond the whiteout static storm between them. He crawled across the garage floor towards the man, and for every inch he crawled Rick backed away until the backs of his grandfather’s thin legs hit the washing machine and he startled, a tendril of worry-regret-shame-fury escaping him before he locked his mind down again.

Morty couldn’t stand the emptiness; that teasing taste of Rick's thoughts was too tempting, and the return to humming emptiness was worse by far when Rick locked his thoughts down once more. He couldn’t stand not feeling Rick’s love for him. How had he grown so accustomed to Rick’s mind so quickly? He felt like he’d been torn in two, an essential part of his being lost to him forever. Rick's mind had been the only one he could hear, with nothing in the way of that, nothing clogging up the wondrous feel of Rick's thoughts, and now it was gone and Morty was so alone. 

And Rick.. Rick was right there, the callous asshole, just watching how much this was hurting him and doing nothing! Morty lunged forward and coiled himself around Rick’s legs, the physical contact giving him the toehold he needed to attempt to burrow past Rick’s mental shields, clumsy and forceful. At first he just pushed, pushed and battered at the mess of thoughts keeping Rick from him, but then he started to rip at them, and managed to dig in his metaphorical nails. In desperation he pulled as hard as he could, a rush of power and pride thrilling through him when a sliver of Rick's shield fell away. He didn't even notice the spasm of agony that crossed Rick's face, the sharp scream that cut through the silence of the garage. He tore his way past layer upon layer of useless trivia like his life depended on it until finally he broke through into the whirling, sparkling perfection of Rick’s mind.

But something was wrong; Rick’s mind didn’t feel the same. It was muted, dulled, a pale imitation of its prior brilliance, like a shroud was draped over his thoughts, stifling its beauty. Morty longed for that overwhelming love and acceptance and affection to inundate him again, but it felt like Rick was pulling even further away, flinching from him. He didn’t feel welcome here; he felt like an intruder. The still pools of Rick’s consciousness, once swelling up to draw him into the man’s memories, now felt dark and foreboding-- iced over. The swirling power was subdued, held purposely still, waiting and wary. And he still couldn’t feel what Rick was thinking. Morty lashed out again, furious and hungry for the caress of Rick's thoughts, and cracked that ice. As soon as he had Rick’s thoughts finally spilled out from where he had been hiding them and swirled over Morty, pulling him down.

~~~

Rick was trapped in a memory.. a nightmare. He was drunk. Drunk and young and a fucking idiot, drinking himself stupid with a fake ID he’d made, money from selling the things fueling his binge. He remembered going to the bathroom perfectly. It was always the part of this memory that he remembered perfectly, down to the smell, the greasy walls, the dingy, flickering light. His shoes had stuck and squeaked with every step down the hall, and he’d shouldered the door open rather than touch it. He remembered thinking, when he’d seen the man, that maybe he should just turn around and leave, go use the women’s washroom or piss in the alley behind the bar, but he’d ignored that instinctive part of his mind that had screamed danger.

_ Morty.. _

The man had tried to coax, before he'd forced. But Rick could never remember the sickly sweet words that had come before the rancid stench of the urinal and the man's breath on his neck when his face had been slammed into the porcelain, stunning him and making him clumsy and ineffective as he tried, too late,  _ too late _ , to get away. 

_ No.. Morty, Morty was here, he didn't want.. Morty had.. _

He'd ripped away at Rick, forced and torn and taken.. And Rick had never, in all these years, been able to forget the sense of violation, of intrusion. He'd recognised the look of it in Morty's eyes instantly when his grandson had pulled his attention away from that poker game, when he'd come stumbling out of another bathroom on another world from the same situation. It was only the mingled relief in Morty's eyes that had kept him from killing the fucker that had come out after his grandson, at least right away. But Morty was more important than his own need for revenge. And Morty had been safe with him. Rick wouldn't let anyone hurt Morty the way he'd been hurt; he hated himself for every second that Morty had suffered without his knowledge. 

_ Suffered.. known..  _

Morty knew, not what had happened to Rick, he would never lay such a burden on him, but he'd seen the same violation and impotent rage in Morty's eyes that he'd seen in his own. 

_ I thought he understood.. Even if he didn't know. I never wanted him to know, but I can't stop him. Oh god, I can't stop him. Stop..  _

Memories of that awful night were gathering at the edges of Rick's mind again, trying to drag him back into the past, but he tried to push them aside. Morty didn't know, when he'd forced his way inside of his mind, just what he'd be unlocking, but Rick recognised the similarities between his own past and what had happened to Morty, and he refused to let his memories hurt the boy. But it was so hard to control his thoughts with Morty, huge and alien, like a splinter in his..  _ his mind, his thoughts, so prized- the most essential part of his being breached, broken, torn apart, oh god it hurts, get out get out getoutgetoutgetout!  _

Rick started to lose himself again, spiraling into a flood of remembered sensation and suffering, augmented with the pain and violation Morty was forcing on him, his desperate, clawing hold on reality slipping.

~~~

Morty's body jerked back in horror, landing on his ass and scuttling backwards mindlessly until he bumped into the desk behind him. His eyes were locked on Rick's face, taking in, for the first time, the rictus of pain and fear clouding his grandfather's features; the sound of Rick crying out, hoarse and breathless, echoed in Morty’s ears as he started to quiver. 

He was hurting Rick; he was hurting him and he couldn't stop, couldn't pull out of his mind.  _ What have I done? _ Thought Morty, eyes unblinking and locked on Rick's face as tears flooded up and spilled down his cheeks, matching the ones falling unheeded down the face of the strongest man he'd ever met. 

He could still feel Rick reliving one of the worst moments of his life, though there was an artificial distance now, mirroring the physical one he'd scrambled for as he had once more become aware of his own body. But Rick was.. he was trapped by what Morty had done to him, forced into a flashback that he couldn't stop because of the way Morty had..  _ oh god.. _

The similarities between this situation and the one Rick was suffering through in his head hit Morty hard all at once and he fell forwards onto his hands and knees, vomiting and sobbing. His arms were barely able to keep him from falling into the pool of sick, his body uncoordinated and slow with his mind still tangled up in Rick's.

He didn't know how to let go, and he could feel the way he scraped and bowed out the boundaries of Rick's mind as he struggled to retreat. But he barely understood his new ability and certainly couldn’t control it -- clumsily thrashing around like a bull in a china shop. The way he'd torn into Rick's mind was different than just sliding inside, and he didn't know how he'd done it, didn't know how to undo it.

Rick screamed sharply as Morty, terrified and panicking, tried his hardest to yank himself away, and the sound was enough to freeze Morty in place, physically and mentally, as bile rose up his gorge again.

He swallowed convulsively and crawled closer to Rick, dodging clumsily around the mess on the concrete without taking his eyes off of the trembling man. He stopped, crouched and small at Rick's feet, then inched his hand out, finally resting his fingertips softly on his grandfather's ankle.

“Rick?” He whispered, speaking both out loud and, as gently as he could, mentally. He thought soft thoughts, kept himself curled up small, tried not to cause any more damage than he already had and spoke again, barely louder than before. “..Rick?”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Spoilery summary:  
> Morty forces his way into Rick’s mind, provoking a flashback for Rick to a memory that closely resembles the King Jellybean situation Morty experienced, without the happy ending. (This flashback does not include a graphic description of the events. It focuses more on how it made Rick feel, with a few sense memories and the like.) Rick is not unaware of the similarities and tries his best to keep the worst of it from Morty, not wanting him to suffer too, but has a difficult time controlling his mind with the way Morty has invaded his thoughts.  
> Morty makes himself sick with how upset he is by what he’s done. After struggling to pull out of Rick’s mind and failing (briefly making things worse in the process) he tries to just curl up small and reach out gently to Rick instead, which is where the chapter ends.


	7. Chapter 7

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Whew, this update was a long time coming! Thanks to everyone who commented on the last chapter. It was your support that made this fic bully it's way into an update ahead of my other fics. I just got so inspired!

_..Rick? _

Morty’s aching, miserable plea broke through Rick’s memories, pulling his focus away from the horror it had been trapped within. He tried again to force the past back, to get control of his mind, and found that Morty, while still  _ very much there _ , wasn’t a hindrance to marshalling his thoughts anymore. Rick blinked damp eyes, grimacing as he realised that he’d been crying without his even knowing. He rubbed a clumsy hand across his face and then stared blankly at the ground, unused to being so painfully aware of his own mind. But he couldn’t  _ not  _ think about it.

_ Morty’s presence was like a canker sore in his head, raw and conspicuous. Still, though, it was infinitely better than it had been. But he wanted Morty  _ out. _ He hated knowing that Morty knew what he was thinking, feeling. He couldn’t stand the thought that Morty had- _

**_No._ **

Rick forced his thoughts to still, a lifetime of pushing his brilliance to the absolute limit giving him the strength of will to calm his mind and bring it into rigid, regimented order once more now that Morty wasn’t actively getting in the way.

~~~

Morty watched with miserable regret as Rick’s mind quieted and dimmed suddenly. It was made all the more terrible by the flash of swirling, crystalline wind that had swept those awful memories aside before he’d felt, for the briefest instance, his grandfather’s thoughts ticking over into that sharp, quick-witted brilliance that he loved so much. 

But Rick didn’t want him to see that, didn’t want him here.. and even Morty’s memories of seeing his grandfather’s mind for the first time were tainted now with the definite knowledge of just how much of an intrusion his presence had been.

“I d-don’t know how to stop, R-rick. I-I-I k-keep hurting you wh-when I try to p-p-p-pull ou— to- to leave.” Morty said aloud, his thoughts a litany of desperate apologies and regret. They managed to slip free of his imperfect hold, even as he tried his best to stay still in Rick’s mind, sweat beading on his brow from the sheer effort it took to do so.

~~~

Rick swallowed convulsively and slowly concentrated, surprised at the effort it took to focus beyond the mental landscape inside of himself. Morty was a huddled, miserable ball at his feet, his fingertips the only point of contact between them, and his aching regret and self-disgust was obvious in every line of his body.

The boy’s respect for him had been strengthened rather than damaged by the terrible secret he’d ripped out into the open, and it left Morty shuddering with revulsion to even consider what he’d done to the most important person in the world to him.

Rick blinked, shocked.  _ I shouldn’t know that.  _ He knew too much about what Morty was feeling.

“Morty. You- your power is- it’s bleeding into me too, I can sense.. Fucking hell, is this how it’s been for you this entire time? It’s like you’re drenched in emotion.” Rick alternately shied away and stared in fascination at Morty, the allure of learning everything he could about Morty’s new ability clashing with the raw violation of touching Morty’s most intimate feelings. It had hurt when Morty touched his mind, and the idea of doing that to his grandson in turn made him feel nauseous. Rick couldn’t bear the idea of doing that to his grandson, not when his own experience of it was still so fresh and raw, the pain so recently suppressed. 

So, for once in Rick’s life, he turned his back on the temptation of discovery. He just wanted to be alone in his own head right now. He needed privacy, needed to retreat and lick his wounds, and to do that, he needed his grandson out of his head. And if Morty couldn’t pull away on his own, then he would have to do it for him.

Rick gingerly spread his metaphorical wings, flexing mental muscles that Morty’s gift allowed him to access for the first time in his life, and explored the way his grandson’s presence sat within him, like a foreign object lodged under his skin. He folded tattered tendrils of Morty’s energy in, disconnecting the boy’s clinging, unconscious grip from traces of Rick’s love for him, of his acceptance and care and a slew of positive emotions he felt for the boy, and curled Morty up, cradling his mental form with the utmost delicacy. Then, with a shudder, he forced himself to relax the babbling wall of facts and figures he’d erected in the wake of his grandson’s revelation, leaving him with a clear path to softly ease Morty back into his own head. He was gentle as he eased the boy down, careful to hold in every little whorl and wisp of his grandson softly and securely as he pressed Morty back where he belonged, watching closely as Morty settled into place. As soon as he was sure the boy was safe and nestled in his own mind, Rick let go, touching nothing as he withdrew with infinite caution, careful to leave everything exactly the way it had been before his presence had pushed into Morty’s thoughts.

The moment he’d “let go” of him, Rick could feel the power begin to fade. He pulled back into himself quickly, turning his focus to his own hastily constructed defenses, and used the last of his borrowed ability to strengthen his mental blockade against Morty. Rick firmly sequestered himself in the solitude and safety of his facts and figures as the mental landscape faded into his subconscious. Then he fell back into the physical, suddenly aware of his surroundings: his harsh breathing, his aching, tense muscles, the death grip he had on the surface behind him, and the light, delicate pressure of Morty’s fingers on his ankle.

~~~

Seeing Rick work Morty’s siphoned power with such finesse and expertise was a revelation to the huddled boy; he watched with awe as Rick stepped into an arena Morty had been flailing around in this entire time and move like he’d been born to it. It was akin to watching Rick conjure up the elements, summoning a storm of wind and rain to coil around him and bear him up into the sky, electricity arcing between his hands and shattering itself upon the ground at his command. Rick was directing forces Morty could barely comprehend with effortless precision, while Morty was being knocked asunder by the strength of his gift, stumbling and fighting just to stay on his feet.

The way it felt to be wrapped up tight and safe in Rick’s mental touch, however, was better by far than anything he’d ever felt. He was overwhelmed by the tenderness of Rick’s touch, soaked in his light and love and a newfound sense of belonging as Rick slid him so delicately back into himself, pulling away with a small, unintentional caress. And then he was alone again, left yearning, with Rick more sealed off than ever. 

Morty wanted to reach out and re-establish some kind of physical connection the moment Rick pulled his ankle away, but instead he curled his hand in tight to his chest, knowing now just how much worse it could get. Not feeling the electric hum of Rick’s brilliance, while heartbreaking, was infinitely preferable to hurting the man ever again. He could barely stand to think of what he’d already done to him.   
“R-rick.. I’m s-so sorry. I sh-shouldn’t have— I- I didn’t think. I shouldn’t have— I couldn’t really help it before, but just now when y-you— I felt so  _ alone, _ R-rick. That’s no excuse, b-b-but-”

Rick cut him off with an exhausted wave of his hand, and Morty bit his lip as he complied, looking up at his grandfather with wide, worried eyes. 

~~~

Rick stared down at his grandson as the boy babbled out apologies with an absolutely anguished look on his small, tear-stained face. Before he’d seen so far into the depth of Morty’s regret for having hurt him, Rick knew he would have lashed out, eager to rip into the person who had hurt him in turn. 

But this wasn’t just anybody; this was his grandson. And he could see that Morty was already doing Rick’s work for him, tearing into himself with a sharper, more accurate blade than Rick could ever wield in his stead. So, with a weary sigh, he let go of his anger and let his shoulders slump as he leaned back against the washing machine behind him, rubbing at his aching temples with long, slim fingers before holding up one hand for silence. 

“I know you are, Morty. J-just, just shut up about it. In fact, just— let’s not talk about it at all. It’s done, it happened, I know you won’t do it again.” Morty looked like he was ready to spew out even more apologies, but Rick gave him a look to keep him quiet and elaborated, saying, “The part you can help, Morty. The part you can help. I know you can’t control some of it. I mean, I know you won’t dig in again. I’ll- I’ll figure the rest out, see if I can fix whatever the fuck happened to you.”

He kneaded away at the pounding in his head and then dug through his pockets for his flask. Taking a long, bracing drink before turning away from Morty’s crestfallen face, he looked over at the chemical analysis he’d set to run on that purple goo before everything had gone to shit. The results would have to wait, though. His grandson’s presence was still too jarring, a distraction he didn’t need right now. Stepping over the puddle of vomit on the floor and dodging Morty’s tiny, curled up body, he rifled through the shelf against the wall until he found the power pack he was looking for. He was too aware of Morty, too focused on him, too edgy, and if he wanted to get anywhere as far as figuring out what had happened to the boy, he’d need to focus. 

“Just give me a minute to modify it and you’ll be able to carry that disruptor with you, Morty. Then y-you can go sleep it off or something, get the rest you obviously didn’t last night,” he said without turning around, keeping his eyes and his thoughts determinedly off of his grandson as he flipped the device on its back. He bent over it, setting to work.

~~~

Morty had screwed up a lot in his rather short life. He’d destroyed his entire world trying to get laid. He’d gotten countless people killed trying to save a single life that he’d wound up taking, himself. Pick any adventure he’d gone on with Rick and there was probably something in there that he’d done wrong. 

But Morty couldn’t remember ever regretting his actions as keenly as he did now, as he watched Rick move warily around him, refusing to look at him and obviously uncomfortable, his half-hearted dismissal of Morty’s apologies notwithstanding. He didn’t need his telepathy to know that Rick was far from okay, but the way his grandfather had firmly shut the door on the topic left Morty adrift and uncertain of how to even start to fix his monumental fuck-up. He didn’t know what to do, but he definitely didn’t want to leave Rick down here in the garage and go upstairs to sleep. Losing the soft, velvet rub of Rick’s mind against the edges of his senses and being truly and completely on his own once more was the absolute last thing Morty wanted.

“Oh,” he said, hesitant. “I um— y-y-you d-don’t need to worry about- about that, Rick. I d-don’t mind just— I can just stay out of your- your way. You should probably focus on- on that purple stuff. It spilled out of one of those shipping containers and all over me when those guards started shooting, you know, and I think it must be what- wh- what..” Morty’s prattling trailed off as Rick turned to look at him for the first time in what felt like hours, the pain and wariness and what looked almost like  _ fear _ in his grandfather’s eyes knocking his thoughts askew.

“That’s right, Morty. I  _ do  _ need to concentrate, which is why I need  _ you-” _ Rick held out the machine to him in a cautious grip, and Morty numbly accepted it, his heart cracking when Rick carefully avoided touching him. “I need you to go to your room and give me the space to do that. Okay, Morty?”

Morty blinked back the tears that were pooling in his eyes, swallowing against the lump in his throat and nodding too fast, a frantic bob of his head, as he looked down at Rick’s shoes. Then he scrambled to his feet, cringing when he saw Rick flinch at the quick movement, and clutched the device tightly to his chest as he backed away toward the door of the garage. 

“O-o-okay, Rick. Um- I’ll um- s-s-see you in a- a few hours, then, right?” Morty said, looking up at Rick pleadingly and feeling utterly guilty for reaching out for reassurance when Rick was the one who had been hurt. He needed to know they’d be okay, though.  _ He needed it. _

But Rick’s paper-thin smile and muttered “Sure, Morty. A few hours.” just left him wanting, and after a tense moment of silence Morty just nodded and slipped out of the garage, careful to close the door softly behind him to keep from disturbing Rick again. He started walking toward his room, clutching the disruptor tightly to his chest and dreading the moment when he’d finally move far enough away for its bubble of silence to smother even the dim warmth of Rick’s presence from his senses. His breath hitched in a strangled sob as he finally felt it happen, Rick’s mind vanishing sharply, abandoning him.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks to [Futagogo](http://archiveofourown.org/users/futagogo/pseuds/futagogo) for the ace beta read. Your love of grammar makes me weak in the knees.

**Author's Note:**

> Come say hi to me on tumblr! I'm [squikkums](http://squikkums.tumblr.com/) and [sqkandmorty](http://sqkandmorty.tumblr.com/) is my RickMorty specific side-blog.


End file.
